Louisiana Governor Races 1975-2007 as a testbed for runoff pathologies

We look at all LA governor races from 1975 to now.
(The cutoff date 1975 was selected because that seems to have been
the first time they employed the runoff system. As far as I know, LA
is the only US state to elect governors with such a runoff.)
We shall examine each race with the benefit of hindsight to see what pathologies
happened. In some cases we will not have enough information to be certain a pathology
occurred and then we shall have some varying degree of certainty.

The 9 LA Governor races 1975-2007 – Summary

Won by landslide majority hence no runoff needed

2007, 1999, 1983, 1975

No runoff since candidate withdrew

1987

(Hence were 4 races in which a runoff happened. In every one, turnout was
higher in the runoff than in the first round, contradicting the claim commonly made
by FairVote that runoffs have low turnout.)

Probably favorite-betrayal pathologies

2003, 1995, 1991, 1979

Non-monotonic

1991 (and 1995? and 2003?)

Beats-all-winner loses

1995, 1991 (and 1979?)

Exhibiting "no-show paradox"

2003, 1991 (and 1995? and 1979?)

To summarize this even more concisely (counting uncertain cases
fractionally via a somewhat-subjective probability estimate – the figure is the percentage of races
in which that phenomenon occurred):

What happened

Experimental data

Theor. model

Landslide majority win

44%

0

No runoff due to withdraw

11%

(model not applicable)

Favorite-betrayal pathologies

40%

20%

Non-monotonicity

20%

15%

"No show" paradox

40%

16%

Beats-all winner loses pathology

28%

4%

where I use as the "theor.model"
the random election model for
3-candidate Instant Runoff races.
As you can see, the theor. model in spite of its
crudity didn't do too badly.
Its main errors are the first and last predictions.
The last one is due to the fact
1D and
2D
politics models are better than random election model for
this purpose (at least in my experience).
The first one is due to fact the
Dirichlet model is clearly better
than the random elections model for that purpose (since it predicts a
nonzero value!).

Nice math puzzle: The Dirichlet model
predicts (in a 3-candidate race) that a majority-top winner exists, hence no
need for runoff, with probability=56.25%.

This is an example of success of Louisiana's runoff system in the sense
that Blanco won the runoff despite a big loss in the plurality election.
(But she became very unpopular during her term due to perceived poor handling of the
Hurricane Katrina disaster and declined to run for re-election.)
Most of the voters for the 3rd,4th, etc candidates in round 1, evidently
went for Blanco, not too surprisingly since the other high finishers all were
in her party. (Also note the turnout was higher in the runoff
round than the first
round, contrary to IRV-advocates' common assertion runoff turnout is
lower. Same thing
happened in 1991 and 1995 and 1979, i.e. it happened every time it
possibly could.)

Runoff however may have exhibited some pathologies. For example, suppose
in round 1 that 2% of the electorate (6% of Jindal's voters) had
decided to
strategically vote for Leyoub instead of Jindal. That would have
made the
runoff be Leyoub vs. Jindal, which probably would have resulted in Jindal's victory
unlike in the Blanco vs. Jindal runoff which actually happened.
[Can anybody find poll data on that question?]
That's somewhat speculative, but if so, it would have been an example of dishonesty paying.

Indeed, quite possibly that would have worked even if those Jindal voters
had defected to Leyoub in both the 1st and 2nd rounds.
That's more speculative, but if so, this race was an
example of non-monotonicity – voting against
Jindal causes Jindal victory.

There's another pathology which definitely happened – favorite betrayal.
If in an election, some subset of
voters would have gotten a better result (in their view) by not voting for
their favorite top, then we here call that a "favorite betrayal scenario."
(Also, in every such scenario on this page, voting their favorite below top
was the only way that voter subset could get a better
election result.)
Undoubtably at least 6% of Jindal's
voters (i.e. 2% of the total electorate) preferred Leyoub over Blanco.
(In the USA, it is extremely rare for an election result between two near-equal candidates
to be biased 94-6 or more.)
They would have been better off betraying their favorite
Jindal by
voting Leyoub in round 1 (or, for that matter, in both rounds).
This would have caused either Jindal or Leyoub to win, either way (in their view) an improvement.
Also, there seems
little or no question at
least 14% of Jindal's voters must have preferred Leach over Blanco,
hence this
race also exhibited a second "favorite betrayal"
pathology.

Finally, there was a "no show paradox." Suppose an extra contingent (equivalent to 12.2% of
the electorate) of voters had magically appeared, all ranking Hunt Downer top and Jindal
dead last. Then it would have been a Jindal vs Downer runoff, which Jindal would have easily won.
Thus these extra voters, by ranking Jindal last, cause him to win.
They would be better off not voting (as in fact, they didn't).

At naive first glance, the magnitude of Foster's final-round
victory makes you think this race could not have
exhibited any pathologies. But a closer look leaves me almost-convinced of the opposite!

Only 20,000 votes would have put either
(former governor) Roemer or (congresswoman, state treasurer, and soon to be senator)
Landrieu into the runoff instead of Fields.
Both had led in the polls until nearly election time.

Fields was black (indeed, the first black candidate for LA governor in over 100 years)
and felt to have no chance of election against the white old-wealth multi-millionaire
Foster in a state which
had last election put Neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klan Wizard David Duke into the runoff.
(As part of this 1995 campaign, Foster paid more than $150,000 to
David Duke for his mailing list of supporters. Duke also endorsed Foster.
After failing to report the purchase as a campaign expenditure, Foster became the first
Louisiana governor to admit and pay a fine for violating the state's ethics code...
a distinction which
of course set him
up for a landslide re-election win.
Fields' support was very narrow; exit polls indicated he got all but 2% of
his votes from blacks in the first round.)
Hence many
Democrats felt Fields running at all was therefore a stupid act, strategically speaking (and
they were proven right in the end) but naturally this view was not popular with Fields
supporters.

Fields wasn't 100% dead since a Mason-Dixon poll on October 17 found that Louisianans thought
(by 75%-to-18% margin) "a black" could theoretically
win – and they even thought that Fields probably would win
(by 45%-to-21%, with 34% undecided, said a 27 Feb. Mason-Dixon poll) –
provided his opponent was David Duke! Against pretty much
anybody else, though, Fields was going to lose
a head-to-head race (see polls below) by a huge margin.

Fields also was involved in a mini-scandal when he abused his congressional "franking"
privileges to bill taxpayers $46,000 for
sending out gubernatorial-campaign
literature. In 1997 the FBI videotaped him stuffing about $20,000
in cash from Edwin W. Edwards into his pockets, but that happened after this race ended and
hence did not affect it.

Former Democrat governor Roemer now ran as a conservative
Republican with an anti-crime anti-welfare platform.
Foster switched from Democrat to Republican during the race and spent $2 million of
his own money to move slightly ahead of
Roemer in the Republican vote.

But it seemed likely that either white (Roemer or Landrieu) would have beaten
Foster in the runoff since either was more centrist. The poll data (below) support that
speculation for Roemer, but not for Landrieu.
So if just 9000 Fields voters had voted Roemer instead (or
if just 5000 had voted Landrieu instead?) they would have gotten a winner they preferred.

Thus this race probably exhibited one (and perhaps two) favorite betrayal pathologies
(and no-show paradoxes too
– since those Fields voters would have been better off either "staying home" or voting for Roemer;
ditto many Landrieu voters).
It also may have been non-monotonic: if about 20,000 Fields and 10,000
Landrieu voters had voted for Foster, that
would have put Roemer into the runoff, whereupon he probably would have beaten Foster
(perhaps
even if these defecting voters still voted Foster even in the runoff, although that is more speculative).

Fields was definitely a lose-to-all loser (among the top four) –
and probably Roemer was a beats-all Condorcet winner.
Louisianans were asked in several Mason-Dixon telephone polls how they would vote in
hypothetical 2-person runoffs. The results were:

Hypothetical Runoff

Poll result %s

Poll date

Sample

Roemer v. Fields

Roemer 54, Fields 27

17 Oct 1995

826

Roemer v. Fields

Roemer 55, Fields 26

25 Sep 1995

827

Roemer v. Fields

Roemer 61, Fields 22

28 Aug 1995

828

Roemer v. Fields

Roemer 59, Fields 24

8 July 1995

826

Roemer v. Fields

Roemer 58, Fields 26

8 May 1995

818

Landrieu v. Fields

Landrieu 51, Fields 21

17 Oct 1995

826

Roemer v. Landrieu

Roemer 43, Landrieu 42

17 Oct 1995

826

Roemer v. Landrieu

Roemer 43, Landrieu 42

25 Sep 1995

827

Roemer v. Landrieu

Roemer 45, Landrieu 40

28 Aug 1995

828

Roemer v. Landrieu

Roemer 43, Landrieu 38

8 July 1995

826

Roemer v. Landrieu

Roemer 45, Landrieu 41

8 May 1995

818

Foster v. Landrieu

Foster 42, Landrieu 39

17 Oct 1995

826

Foster v. Fields

Foster 53, Fields 24

17 Oct 1995

826

Roemer v. Foster

Roemer 40, Foster 44

17 Oct 1995

826

Roemer v. Foster

Roemer 47, Foster 32

25 Sep 1995

827

Roemer v. Foster

Roemer 43.5, Foster 38

(avg of both above)

1653

1991:
The famous "Lizard versus Wizard" race replete with pathologies.
It was so utterly insane that it has a
web page of its own!

1987:
First round:

Buddy Roemer(D)

33%

E.W.Edwards(D)

28%

Robert L.Livingston(R)

18%

Billy Tauzin(D [became R in 1995])

10%

J.H. "Jim" Brown(D)

9%

...

Runoff round: did not happen since Edwards withdrew.
(This race was the only time Edwards finished
other than first in an election.)
This withdrawal was generally believed to have been an intentional strategic
masterstroke designed to
allow Edwards to come back and win the next governor race!
(Wikipedia:
"[Edwards] was cleverly setting a trap for Roemer. By withdrawing,
Edwards denied Roemer the opportunity to build a governing coalition in the
general election race, and denied him the decisive majority victory that he
surely would have attained. In one stroke, Edwards made Buddy Roemer a minority governor.")
Both Roemer & Edwards were from the same party (Democrat) at the time,
although Roemer and Tauzin later switched to the Republican Party.
It was felt by many (including Edwards) that to win this race, he had to go against
Livingston in the runoff.
Edwards talked up Livingston during the campaign but it did not
work.

Based on all this craziness, one might think pathologies must have been
present in this race! But I do not see any! (I suppose one could argue that maybe
some Livingston supporters intentionally-dishonestly voted Roemer because they thought
Livingston could not win the runoff. The Republican Livingston later resigned from the US House
[even though speaker-elect at the time] due to a sex scandal [in 1999].)

1983:
Edwards wins with 62% of the vote in round 1, closest opponent (Treen)
has 36%.

1979:
First Round:

David C. Treen(R)

297674

Louis Lambert(D)

283266

Jimmy Fitzmorris(D)

280760

Paul Hardy(D)

227026

E.L."Bubba" Henry(D)

135769

Ed.G."Sonny" Mouton Jr.(D)

124333

Luther D. Knox(D)

6327

Ken Lewis(D)

5942

Greg Nelson (no party)

4783

Runoff round:
Treen wins by 690691 to Lambert's 681134.

Story behind this race:
After 102 straight years of Democrats as Louisiana governors (the last Republican was
the Vermont "carpetbagger" W.P.Kellog in 1873-1877), the Republican Treen was elected.
Treen, a 51-year-old lawyer, had begun his political career as a segregationist and counted on
white votes to propel him to victory, whereas his Democratic opponent Lambert hoped
for Black votes and was endorsed by organized Labor.
Treen had pledged to keep misleadingly-titled "right to work" laws outlawing unionized shops,
thus drawing the ire of labor unions.
Treen had a reputation for personal honesty and
(amazingly for a Louisiana politician at that time) disclosed his personal finances.
That contrasted well with the fact governor
E.W.Edwards and Lt.Gov. J.Fitzmorris were both involved in an FBI bribery investigation –
but this was not widely known until after the election was over and hence probably did not
affect it.
[Edwards explained to the press that he had "played games" with an FBI undercover informant
trying
to bribe him after "it became obvious the conversation was being recorded."
Later he explained how $10,000 from Korean businessman Tongsun Park was not a gift to
him but rather to his wife. After the election,
E.G.Mouton Jr. (who was named "executive counsel" by Treen and had received an unrecorded
$15,000 contribution) also was subpoenaed by
the grand jury, as was Treen's Lt.Gov. Robert E. Freeman.]
There were dozens of major errors found when rechecking voting
machines in the first round.
Fitzmorris initially led Lambert but a retabulation put Lambert ahead of Fitzmorris by
about 2506 votes.

Fitzmorris sued, alleging Lambert had benefited from
fraudulent votes and improper counting procedures (thousands of alleged fraudulent
acts and irregularities were listed in the suit; in a few days Fitzmorris magically lost about 2000
votes while Lambert gained about 2000). The court "sympathized" with
Fitzmorris but refused
to let him in the runoff because he'd
only clearly proven a few hundred votes bogus, which wasn't enough.
That all stimulated Treen to play it safe by
hiring guards and 1000s of volunteers to help guard and observe the machines and ballots
in the runoff round. That worked when Treen won by a tiny 9557-vote margin out of 1.4 million votes cast
(50.3% to 49.7%) over Lambert. About $20M was spent campaigning for this $50K/year job.
Treen became unpopular during his term which is why he was resoundingly defeated by Edwards
next election.

Treen was the only Republican in the race. All other major contenders were Democrats.
Fitzmorris, Hardy, Henry, and Mouton all crossed party lines to endorse Treen, and
Hardy later switched to the Republican party (and became Lt.Gov. 1988-1992; also Treen once
elected appointed
Fitzmorris as his "special assistant for industrial development").
Lambert blamed his defeat mainly on Fitzmorris' suit:
"If it hadn't been for that lawsuit, I would have beat him 55 percent to 45 percent."

Probable pathologies:
If just a few thousand of Lambert's supporters had switched their votes to Fitzmorris
(or if there really was a fraud and that fraud were undone), then, considering how close
Treen's victory was even over the scandalized Lambert, Fitzmorris would
probably have defeated Treen.
(Wikipedia: "Treen realized that he was fortunate in that Fitzmorris may well have been a stronger
opponent than Lambert.")
Indeed, if enough Lambert voters had switched
their votes to either Fitzmorris or Hardy to get them into the runoff, then they
too probably would have beaten Treen, which those voters would have preferred. (There is little
doubt that at least 60,000 Lambert voters existed who preferred Hardy over Treen, and
certainly at least 2,000 existed who preferred Fitzmorris over Treen.)

It also exhibited no-show paradoxes, e.g. if
sufficiently many Lambert-top Treen-bottom voters had "stayed home"
then a candidate they preferred probably would have won – their act of
voting honestly Treen bottom caused Treen to win.
(If Fitzmorris would
have beaten Treen, then only a few thousand would have needed to stay home, and almost
certainly they could also have stayed home during the runoff round also.)

It also is plausible – although this is more speculative –
that Fitzmorris or perhaps Hardy was actually the "beats-all"
Condorcet winner (e.g. presumably Hardy, as a future Republican, would have been preferred by
Treen supporters over Lambert, and also the usual thinking was that the Democrats
would normally beat a Republican and Treen only beat Lambert due to the lawsuit
and associated higher-than-usual scandal).

Luther Devine Knox, tired of getting few votes,
had his name legally changed to "None Of The Above."
However,the Secretary of State refused to let him on even as "L.D. 'None of the Above' Knox"
and the legal name change came through too late (ruled a judge)
to get him on the ballot under that name.

1975:
Edwin Edwards wins with 62.35% (closest rival has 24.29%).

Sources

Would be nice to add details, but...
Wikipedia, State of Louisiana, Newspaper articles, and Polls.